


Orbit

by quomores



Category: 20世紀少年 | 20th Century Boys (Manga)
Genre: M/M, Unrequited obsession, fukubei has problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 13:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12234111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quomores/pseuds/quomores
Summary: We don't always get what we want. Some people move on. Fukubei isn't some people.





	Orbit

**Author's Note:**

> Very old Fukubei aka Hattori Tetsuya aka "Friend" POV one-shot dug up from the depths of "My Documents".   
> The fandom for this series is pretty much non-existent but surely I can't be the only who finds Fukubei's obsession with Kenji fascinating Orz

The door clicked softly shut as Kenji exited, followed by the mechanic hum of the automatic lock engaging.

He sat up silently in the darkened bedroom, eyes fixed on the door.

He imagined Kenji lingering just outside, tentative and unsure, worried about him and his supposedly broken family. He imagined the door softly opening again and Kenji stepping hesitantly back in. (Never mind the fact that the door was now locked and Kenji would never...) He imagined Kenji sitting down by his bed and falling asleep sometime in the night, pressed up awkwardly against the bedroom wall beside him.

He toyed with thoughts of waking Kenji up in the morning, the taste of Kenji’s fried rice, Kenji moving in to look after the poor kids without a mother. He wondered how long he’d be able to keep up the single father charade before Kenji became suspicious. Probably as long as he wanted to. Kenji was easily distracted and stupidly gullible.

He wanted to see the look on Kenji’s face when he eventually found out the truth.

Perhaps he’d tell Kenji himself, the day he unleashes Kenji’s nightmare robot onto the streets of Tokyo.

Kenji would be scared, betrayed, broken and in despair. All because of him. The thought sent such a thrill down his spine his fingers tightened around the sheets.

Or perhaps he won’t tell him. They’d live together, two bachelors and Kanna. He’d be Friend in the day and plain old Fukubei when he returned home. Eventually, he’ll bring Kenji round to it. Kenji would see the brilliance of Friend’s work. Kenji would support him, Kenji would _admire_ him…

 

The door remained closed. He could see Kenji in his mind’s eye, flagging down a taxicab and fading into the distance.

His wildly palpitating heart began to cool.

Yes, of course he wouldn’t return. Kenji was going home— _leaving him_ — completely unaware of how fast his miserable little world was going to collapse. He had no idea that this sad old Fukubei with the three snotty kids was actually the man he was hunting down. The man who was going to make all his shitty little childhood fantasies come true in a way he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

But really, why didn’t Kenji realize? Those dirty, disgusting kids— did they even look like his children? Did he seem at all like some flighty middle-aged loser with a broken family? Why couldn’t Kenji tell that this was all a sick pantomime? As if _he_ would be stuck in such a pathetic dead-end life. It was infuriating. Damn it. Fucking Kenji. How dare he? _How dare he?_

Yet, despite it all, his heart still skipped a beat when Kenji clumsily sputtered out his childhood nickname at the reunion dinner.

_Kenji remembers me?_

Of course he should. But…fuck, he remembers _._ For a moment, he was transported back to the summer of 1970; he wasn’t Friend, just another stupid kid eagerly jumping out of his chair the second he heard Kenji calling his name.

He smoothed a hand over his face. _Oh, there it was again…_

That was what Kenji constantly made him feel. Seething, impotent fury. But twisted together with so much unspeakable _want_ it was physically smothering him.

And it was all the more unbearable because Kenji was _nothing_. As a child he was a snot-nosed, ignorant little shit, with bad grades and skinny arms. As a teen he was an abject, talentless loser tripping on a stupid rock ‘n’ roll dream. As an adult he was common as dirt, hardly worth a second glance.

But Kenji was the one who never gave _him_ a second glance.

He was the unremarkable boy trying to tag along with Kenji’s gang of friends. The hazy face amongst the shady clientele of the pubs where Kenji used to play. The solitary customer lurking between the canned goods and confectionary section of Kenji’s convenience store.

 

Somehow, he’d become caught in Kenji’s gravitational field; like a cold, lifeless planet unable to escape the pull of the sun.

 

Even now, he was sitting on a foreign bed, fantasizing about waking up to Kenji’s stupid, drooling face in the morning.

What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t it have been Kiriko – Beautiful, intelligent, _exceptional_. Though there were also parts of her that were like Kenji — the parts that were foolish, stubborn and sentimental— and somehow, those were the parts that he liked best. That, and the fact that she was Kenji’s fucking _sister_.

Kenji. Why did everything have to revolve around Kenji?

He wanted to go on a rampage, destroy everything that tied him down to this pathetic orbit.

He wanted to make Kenji realize how very, very wrong he was about everything. He wanted to see Kenji scared because of him. He wanted to see Kenji in awe because of him. He wanted to see Kenji going out of his mind. _Because of him._

He wanted to stop being made to feel like dirt by a roadside weed of a man. He wanted Kenji to _see_ him.

Desire mixed with scorn. He was so disgusted by his own desires that he wasn’t sure what he really wanted.

 

But that didn’t matter anymore…

Kenji won’t be getting away from him.

So what if he didn’t want to be friends? Like it or not, he was going to have to spend the rest of his life playing with him.

 

_An epilogue_

 

It has been a full decade since Kenji died. He doesn’t remember much of it.

The thought of Kenji haunts him like a phantom limb. He thought he’d be freed from this obsession once his plans came to pass, but it’d only left a black hole sucking him in deeper.

He thought often about Kenji. Not of that final, twisted look on Kenji’s face, though he’d done everything to obtain it.

No, he thought of the Kenji he’d watched from the shadows for so many years; the Kenji who was fascinated by his tales of the Expo; the Kenji who told him to take off his mask; the Kenji who put him to bed and cooked for his ‘children’; the Kenji who asked him to “fight together with me” with a dead serious look on his face.

Kenji was insignificant and unexceptional. Yet the world without Kenji dwindled into emptiness.

He knows what he wants now. But it is gone. He had destroyed it with his own hands.

There’s nothing left to play with.

It’s time to close the toy box.


End file.
